InfoGuides: Standards: Finding Standards

Last Updated: May 7, 2025 1:28 PM

Standards - The Basics

According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST/standards.gov), "Standards provide industries and innovators with a common language that facilitates trade, simplifies transactions and enables people to work together toward greater common goals that cut across disciplines and borders."

In order to locate the correct standard you need for your work, you'll need to know:

The name or acronym of the publishing organization (ISO)
The unique standard number issued by that organization (ISO 9001)
The title of the standard (ISO 9001 International Standard: Quality Management Systems)
The date or year of issue, as standards are often revised and updated (ISO 9001:2015 International Standard: Quality Management Systems, 5th edition)

Available Standards at RIT

RIT provides full text access to standards issued by ASTM and IEEE through subscription databases.

ASTM Compass
The ASTM Standards and Engineering Digital Library is a vast collection of industry-leading standards and technical engineering information. The Library covers a broad range of engineering disciplines, including aerospace, biomedical, chemical, civil, environmental, geological, health and safety, industrial, materials science, mechanical, nuclear, petroleum, soil science, and solar engineering.
IEEE Xplore
Full text of IEEE and IEE journals, magazines, transactions and conference proceedings as well as active IEEE standards. Ebook packages include over 1200 IEEE/Wiley Press titles and over 950 MIT Press titles in computer science and engineering technologies.

Standards issued by the following organizations are freely available on the web.

ASSIST - QuickSearch
ASSIST is the official source for specifications and standards used by the Department of Defense. Use to locate military standards and specifications. MIL-STD-XXXX, MIL-PRF-XXXX, MIL-DTL-XXXX, MIL-SPEC
EverySpec
Freely available standards, specifications, and specifications. Locate known standards by government agency or search for standards.
ITU
ITU standards, called ITU-T Recommendations are free to all via this site.
NFPA
NFPA Codes and Standards are now freely available. Sign in, create a profile, and view read-only versions of the codes and standards.
OSHA
Contains links to all current OSHA standards.
TAPPI standards, technical information papers, and useful methods
TAPPI Standards, Technical Information Papers, and Useful Methods and more are available on this CD-ROM.

Standards Search Engines

You can search these organization or commercial sites to help identify the existence of a standard, then see the Requesting Standards page of this guide for identifying the best options for obtaining the document.

Accuris Standards Store
Sells industry standards in print and electronic format.
AIAA
List of AIAA standards. May be filtered by topic.
ANSI Webstore
Search for standards from over 180 standards publishers by keyword or document number.
ASCE
Search ASCE standards by year, title, topic. Get a listing of all ASCE standards too.
ASHRAE Store
Current and popular standards are listed.
ASME
Search standards or choose by designator or topic
ASQ
Choose "standards" from the drop down in the search box.
BOMA Standards
Search BOMA's online store for standards.
Document Center
Document Center has reseller agreements with many standards issuing bodies. They also have a very basic All About Standards section of their web site.
IEC Webstore
Search for IEC international standards on electrical and electronics topics.
ISO
Search the International Organization for Standardization's web site for standards developed by national standards bodies in 163 countries.
SAE
Browse SAE Standards here
TAPPI
Use the TAPPI web site to identify the TAPPI standard needed.
UL Catalog of Standards
Search the UL catalog for over 1,000 standards.